The Evolution, Performance And Mechanism Of The Production Of Urban Space In Wuhan

Space is a core concept in Human Geography. Integration of post-modernism, neo-Marxist philosophy, and so on, the problem of urban space production is increasing concerned. This article taking Wuhan urban space production for example, follows the logic thinking of "the background and issues→theory and framework→evolution and mechanism→comparison and development", which systematically analyzes the process of the urban space production, discusses the evolution of urban space production, constructs the assessment model to evaluate the performance of urban space production, induces the dynamic mechanism of urban space production, and does a empirical research on Wuhan urban space production as a representative case. This article is divided into nine chapters:Chapter1is the introduction, focusing on analysis of the background and significance of this research. First, in reality, the problem of urban space has become increasingly prominent, including the dense urban population, the disorder urban of expansion and the loss of urban spatial differences; Second, in theory, the spatial turn of post-modernism, neo-Marxism and geography prompts the academic circle to recognize the issue of space; Finally, the policy has new requirements on the sustainable development of urban space production. Therefore, the systematic study of the Wuhan urban space production has a strong practical value and profound theoretical significance.Chapter2involves the research advances and review in and abroad. Space production has become a hot and cutting-edge issue. Its theories matures, research method improves, achievements become more abundant, but the researches in geographical perspective are relatively few, such as the study on urban space is obviously insufficient, the discovery on macro-and meso-level scale is slightly weak, the combined method of spatialization and quantitative research is infrequent, the general research paradigm has not yet formed.Chapter3systematically summarizes the theories of space production, has laid the theoretical foundation of this article. First, space is the basic concept of the product and merchandise based on the carding of the space-time standpoint’s evolution,"urban space production" is defined as "the forces of capital, power and class elements re-shapes the urban, and make the urban space become their media and product ";Second, this article discriminate the concept of urban space production with the concepts of urban space expansion, the growth of urban space and urban renovation; Finally, the government, enterprises and the public are defined as the main body of space production system, and its diversity, scale, diversification and Fragmentation characteristics are analyzed.Chapter4does the systematic carding of the process of Wuhan urban space production and proposes that it experiences total five stages of the ancient feudal society, the modern semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, the modem semi-colonial and capitalist society,the socialist planned economy system and the socialist planned market economy,which in turn corresponds to the ancient military castle→modern business city→Modern colonial and commercial city→course of development of the modern industrial and commercial city→contemporary international metropolis.The spatial pattern showes three processes of mononuclear→dicaryon→Trinuclear distribution, The nucleation stage can be broken down into five stages of a natural evolution, a early blueprint, structure given, elements of padding and prosthetic repair.Chapter5systematically analyzes the time-spatial evolutionary charateristics of the Wuhan urban space production over nearly hundred years, and propose that Wuhan urban space production maintains the growth momentum which is devided into three period, namely low-growth period, steady growth period and high-growth period. The pattern of Wuhan urban space production has experienced Hankou district dominated→Wuchang district caught up→Hanyang district rised abruptly based on its accumulated strength→Wuchang led the three towns of balanced ment. Overall, the the Wuhan urban space production levels continue to increase, stable and excellent.Chapter6is the analysis of the Wuhan urban space production performance, w hich is evaluated by three systems of space effectiveness, space efficiency and space equity. Through a comprehensive assessment of economic, social and environmental dimensions, it shows that the comprehensive performance level makes steady progress, comprehensive effectiveness gradually appears. Its development process goes through the following stages of space efficiency priority, space effectiveness dominance, the balance ment between space effectiveness and space equity. The overall coupled coordination level of effective system, efficient system and fair system is poor, is in antagonistic with the run-in stage and ascends in spiraling trend during recent years.Chapter7is the dynamic mechanism of the Wuhan urban space production, which is slightly different among different socio-political and economic systems. But on the whole, the dominant position of government power on behalf of the ruling class, one is the regulator of both urban space production, the other is the direct producer; enterprises after the reform opens up as a principal to participate in the process of urban space production; the public works as a space for consumer goods, it belongs to vulnerable groups, but requests more right of speech in recent years.Chapter8selects the Red House, Hanzheng Street, Happy Valley, Chu River and Han Street as typical cases of the Wuhan urban space production. The author uses qualitative methods to do empirical research on the production process, problems, mechanisms and measures of the city’s historical location, the historical block, the waterfront space, the recreation space, the commercial space and the public transport space.Chapter9includes the conclusion, the innovation and the follow-up study of this article. It systematically does a summary of the main conclusions and the main innovations in this article, then proposes a follow-up study plan on the basis of analysis of the full text.Through the systematic research on the Wuhan urban space production, the author draws the following conclusions:①Urban space is a product of urban social relations, the urban space production is a integrated process which re-shapes city by the elements and forces of political, economic power and social class, and makes urban space become a product;②Urban space production generally has temporal and spatial continuity. Spatial continuity is affected by the natural geographic and environmental conditions, the urban space’s location keeps relative stable, Temporal continuity is driven by the socio-economic development, the level of urban space production increasing rises;③The performance of urban space production can be evaluated by the three dimensions of effectiveness, efficiency and equity, according to the stage of the mode of economic development, the performance level of urban space production was dominated by the space-effective and space-efficiency before2000, it begins to focus on the balance between space-efficiency and space-equity after2000;④Dynamic mechanism of urban space production involves the leadership of government, the dominations of enterprise and the participation of the public, actually its essence is gaming and interaction of power, capital, social class and other forces.The major innovations of this article includes:①comprehensive carding of the Wuhan urban space production processes;②construction of performance evaluation model of the urban space production;③summary of the dynamic mechanism of urban space production.